The invention relates to an apparatus for cooling cassette magazines containing tissue samples. The apparatus has a housing and a cooling device.
In a laboratory, tissue samples are ordinarily enclosed in cassettes. The cassettes are labeled in such a way that it is easy to recognize at all times which tissue sample is contained in the corresponding cassette. In order for the cassettes, in particular the tissue samples, to be easily locatable, they are ordinarily organized in cassette magazines. The cassette magazines are in turn equipped with a unique code. It is furthermore known to store the cassette magazines according to fixed laboratory rules, so that in accordance with the laboratory rules regarding allocation of the cassettes to the cassette magazines, the individual tissue samples are stored at fixedly predefined locations and are thus locatable at any time.
The tissue samples must often be cooled, for example in order to section the tissue samples into micrometer-thin slices, for example using a microtome. The entire cassette magazine is therefore preferably cooled.
Commercially usual refrigerators or freezers are used to cool the cassette magazines. The tissue samples can then be retrieved by labeling the refrigerators and/or the individual compartments in the refrigerators, and by corresponding allocation of the individual refrigerators and/or the compartments in the refrigerators to the tissue samples, for example on the basis of a list.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,251,659 B1 discloses a temperature adaptation apparatus. The temperature adaptation apparatus comprises an input chute and an output chute that are arranged at the same height. Multiple cassette magazines are introducible into the apparatus via the input chute. Inside the apparatus, the cassette magazines can be displaced with a laterally arranged slider in the direction toward an output chute. Once the samples in the cassette magazines have reached the desired temperature, they can be removed from the output chute.